According to Mashable.com the Washington Post has asked it’s staff to not engage people on twitter. My overwhelming first response to this is that this is the wrong approach. Twitter and social media as a whole is supposed to be “social.” That means interaction, dialogue, discussion, ranting, raving, brilliance, stupidity in a word – engagement. As I have mentioned previously I think 140 characters is a limit that many journalist and everyday folks find hard to completely express themselves. Most of us have a hard time explaining ourselves in full-blown blog posts let alone 140 characters.
Setting the character limit and the mis-communication/confused message aside take a good look at what the post is asking their staffers to do, not be who they are. Whatever form your artwork takes, written, visual, aural or somewhere in between there is a level of interactivity that you crave, actually need is a better word. Without audience participation, passive or active, these works become near meaningless. (Let’s not get into the whole art for the sake of art discussion here, either. Even if it is just for you, that is an audience of one.) For a news service, lack of audience participation can be the first toll of a death knell.
Don’t engage your audience and the story ends at the by line. Engage your audience and the discussion broadens, reveals, dispels, uncovers, and focuses.
I can almost understand the rationale of not breaking news on twitter but to not use the medium to engage with fans is just mind-boggling. As a corporation maybe the Post should put out a set of guidelines that instructs their staff on the best practices of engagement, who knows maybe they have, in which case they could work with the individual staff member/guest writer to resolve the situation.
I fear for company’s that follow the path of ESPN and now the Washington Post, both which seem to have forgotten the social in social media.
